I’ve always thought “tweens”was a great term for middle school kids because that is exactly what they are. They are in between being a kid and being a young adult. But it’s not only the children who are in this “tween”stage, the parents are as well. I’m speaking from experiences as a mother of a 13 year old.
When your kids are in elementary school, you know there are certain boundaries that have to be maintained. Kids are not allowed to go walk to school by themselves. They cannot roam the mall alone. They cannot freely browse the internet. They cannot watch movies rated higher than PG. Whatever boundaries you set for your kids, you feel pretty confident on where they should be and how to enforce them. But as the kids start to mature, those boundaries begin to shift, sometimes before you’re ready, and it is often difficult to know how and when to let your kids spread their wings.
Usually the kids are ready for this change before the parents. We resist, maybe in part because we don’t want to see our kids grow up and maybe in part because we are afraid that something bad will happen. But as our little ones become “tweens” we as parents have to learn to losen the reigns.
The kids in my son’s middle school all had a field trip to a Disneyland where many were unchaperoned. I was speaking the day before with some other parents, so many of whom were dreadfully afraid of the trouble the kids would get into without supervision. Particularly if the boys were allowed to mix with the girls.
I remember when I was 13 years old, some of the boys and girls were starting to “experiement”. That’s the term we adults use when we talk about risky decisions we made when we were kids. We were just experimenting! I don’t ever remember thinking I was experimenting. I thought I was just making out, but that’s another story… However, this “experimenting”or whatever you want to call it, was an important part of our development and learning. And the quality of those choices we made was based on how secure our bond was at home. Whatever those experiences were, they shaped us.
As I shared this perspective with the the group of parents I saw a lot of nodding heads looking back at me. When we set boundaries for our little ones, we are a dictator,totally in charge. But when we set boundaries for our tweens we are inherently starting to lose control over them. Therefore, we have to think back to when we were young and set boundaries from a totally different angle.
One of the other parents told of how her mom and dad were extremely strict. Her solution? She learned how to be sneaky. She’d lie, get her friends to help cover up her lie, and ended up taking much bigger risks than if her parents had just given her a little more room.
Our tweens are going to screw up and make bad choices from time to time, but they will learn a tremendous amount in the process, which will be a lot better for them than if we protect them from our worst fears. We have to give them room to have those same opportunities to “experiment”that we had. This is not an easy adjustment for us parents, but it is important. If we don’t allow them to ease into adulthood,they will find a way to jump into it with both feet and without our knowledge and support. That,to me,is a lot scarier.
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